I mean, obviously I know humans aren’t tethered to a single warrior in this unit, then dragged across the continent, protected.
But I do know that I don’t like the lingering look he runs over me, head to toe, or that he and the cold one keep speaking in that wretched excuse for a language.
I stand here for a while, dropping my stare to my boots—my new ones.
In all the commotion, I didn’t quite register the boots. I mean, yeah, I changed into them, but I didn’t really process the fact that the warrior went out of his way, probably in the city, to get boots that won’t have me slipping and staggering all over the slushy, wet roads.
It's better for him that I have the right shoes, that the grips are right.
I must’ve been far more annoying than I realised—and I knew I was annoying him often in the dark between my staggering and coughing and rumbling belly and exhausted huffs.
That last one appears now.
The huff that swells my cheeks, and I turn a longing look up at the campfire we left.
It’s further up and tucked close to the pillars, too far away to feel the heat, but close enough that I can watch flames dance.
Glass crouches at it, hands splayed against the hot air, her face moody—and her sharp gaze cuts aside at the male warrior standing behind her.
One of the strays.
I frown up at the path. One is still there, enjoying all the attention of his return.
So there were three strays, not two.
That one up there at our campfire, standing over Glass, I didn’t see.
Something niggles in my mind at the sight of him, something like rage and terror.
This warrior is fire and rubies and tree bark and rust. But there’s something else in him that I can’t quite put my finger on, something that worms my insides.
I consider him, the warmth of the flames casting crimson light all over him, deepening that rusty hue of his.
I blink, and I see Ramona.
Her face flashes in my mind.
I flinch against the intrusion, a startled blink and she’s gone, and I’m left staring at the stray warrior, the warmth of his complexion flickering under the siege of the campfire.
Again, my brain snags on it.
A sense of familiarity.
Have I tracked this one before? Have I looked through binoculars and seen him from a distance?
No.
It’s much more than that.
He turns a look over at us, at the cold one—but then those rubies he has for eyes drift to me.
Like mine, his gaze snags.
He blinks, as if stunned.
My brow furrows, my head tilts.
There’s a gnawing in me, a mutter, a whisper, it tells me to run, to hide, to remember her.
